Beginning of 2022

2022 is here and it’s starting (badly) under the sign of tech inflation and the risks associated with a possible escalation between Russia and NATO. The covid pandemic has already become a background issue…
Let’s look at them and how they impact the tech world.

The tech inflation and its effects on J-D Store

The prices of tech components, chips and even smartphones were already having an increase in the course of 2021, but now the phenomenon seems to increase in intensity and especially for Google Pixels, these phones that are sold out even in the google’s italy store and tends to have speculative prices.

J-D Store was born to providing alternative phones in the 400 euro price – one of the possible names could have been “midranger” at one point – but today, in order to keep the best Pixel 4 /4a (and soon Pixel 5) and the Xperia 10 II in showcase will be necessary to this store to stock up and keep pushing on these best models.

Xperia 10 was the right spot between 2020 and 2021 to have a Sailfish Os phone ready under 399, but the new 64-bit SF OS releases for Xperia 10 II and the aging of the already small “10” batteries, will take the disappearance of the Xperia 10 from the site.

Instead, the Nokia N9 and the Xperia X will remain, these phones that have a different positioning and use cases, without pretending to be daily drivers.

Lastly Pinephones, on the other hand, do not become part of the J-D showcase for not meeting the minimum specs quality, and for their origin directly from the China. Also, there is already the Pine 64 international store, let’s use it.

The Putin risk

The other 2022 issue is the risk of another Russian invasion of Ukraine. The problem arises from the fact that the citizens of Ukraine do not seem willing to be invaded again, or to return under the Russian sphere of influence.

The United States seems to have returned to foreign policy, and the first effect is NATO on pre-alert, and many scenarios are possible in the coming weeks. One of these is some sanctions, the other is a war with embargoes on the whole Russian economy.

For this reason, in the immediate future, the J-D Store will see a greater availability of Pixel phones with Graphene OS, the hardened version of Android, developed by Daniel Micay’s team.

Later, it will be time for a new project, more Open, that will see the light and will begin to grow on 2022 following a Lean startup BML method, like it was for jolla-devices.com

Covid season 3

The Covid-19 pandemic reaches its third year, after a dramatic start in early 2020. In the first instance, the pandemic did not appear to have affected tech buying behaviours.

Sadly, the secondary impact of the covid emergency in China seems to have been slowed down the supply chains of chips and those of battery production.
The effects are still being felt today, with rising car prices – and delivery times ranging in and beyond 6 months – as well as rising cost of chips and components for new smartphones.

As mentioned above, indirectly, the shortage of new phones has led to an increase in the average price of used / refurbished phones, even 2019 models.

Happy new year

So in wishing everyone a happy new year, the hope is that 2022 will be a year of normalization and a return to pre-covid normality, where we can start focusing on the fight against global warming, possibly without wars or strong flares of inflation

Giovanni
J-D

Photo by Don Fontijn on Unsplash